Texts can be organized in many different ways. On the test, you’ll be asked to recognize text structures both directly and indirectly.

One of the best ways to identify a passage’s structure is to track its transitional words and phrases. Transitions show you how the author is moving from one idea to the next.

For example, an “old idea/new idea” structure needs a clear shift from the old idea to the new one:

• Old idea
• Transition
• New idea

In this structure, the new idea is usually what the passage is mainly about.

Similarly, if a passage says there will be three reasons, make sure you can find all three. Items in a list are often introduced with one of the following transition words:

• First
• Second
• Third
• Next
• Also
• Finally
• Lastly

Best practices for structure questions

• Locate the transition word or words.
• Determine the relationship between what comes before the transition and what comes after it.
• Try to predict the answer.
• Pick the answer choice that best matches your answer.

There are three main categories of transitions: continuers, contradictors, and cause-and-effect words.

Continuers

Continuers are words or phrases that add new information that fits with what’s already been said. They can be grouped into five subcategories: adding information, introducing an example, clarifying or defining, emphasizing, and sequencing.

Adding information

• Additionally, in addition
• Also
• And
• Likewise
• Moreover
• Similarly

Introducing an example

• For example
• For instance
• Specifically

Clarifying or defining

• Essentially
• In other words
• Put another way
• That is

Emphasizing

• Indeed
• In fact

Chronological sequence

• First
• After
• Second
• Last
• Third
• Finally
• Before
• Later

Contradictors

Contradictors signal that what comes after the transition will disagree with what came before it. Many contradictory transitions can also introduce a new idea, because the new idea contradicts the old one.

Alternately	Although/though	But	Conversely	Despite
Even so	However	In any case	In contrast	Instead
Meanwhile	Nevertheless	Nonetheless	On the contrary	On the other hand
Rather	Regardless	Still	Whereas	While
Yet

Cause and effect

When authors want to show causality - when one event causes another - they use transitions that help you see that connection:

• Because
• As a result
• For this reason
• Consequently
• Thus
• Therefore
• Then
• Due to

Let’s see how this works in a passage:

This passage is from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, found at Project Gutenberg.

The reader may rest satisfied that Tom’s and Huck’s windfall made a mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked about, gloated over, glorified until the reason of many of the citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every “haunted” house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected, plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden treasure - and not by boys, but men - pretty grave, unromantic men, too, some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck appeared, they were courted, admired, stared at. The boys were not able to remember that their remarks had possessed weight before; but now their sayings were treasured and repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be regarded as remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing and saying commonplace things; moreover, their history was raked up and discovered to bear marks of conspicuous originality. The village paper published biographical sketches of the boys.

How is the passage organized?

a. Cause-and-effect
b. Chronologically
c. Compare and contrast
d. Persuasive
e. Question and answer